Purpose of Appendix Believed Found

"Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.

That's the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal this week."

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"If a person's gut flora dies, it can usually be repopulated easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

In less developed countries, where the appendix may be still useful, the rate of appendicitis is lower than in the U.S., other studies have shown, Parker said.

He said the appendix may be another case of an overly hygienic society triggering an overreaction by the body's immune system."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/10/05/appendix.purpose.ap/index.html

And in other news, Kirk Cameron still insists that Jesus made the banana.

about the health of Keith Olbermann's gut flora?

done that.

This story raises two interesting points about how human perspective plays in our understanding of, as well as the presentation of, notions of science.

On the one hand it should be rather obvious that the word 'useless' is really not a part of zoological nomenclature. It is generally meaningful in relation to something else as in the colorful street expression as useless as tits on a goose (since geese don't suckle their young, breasts would be useless).

On the other hand 'useless' is a term that has been applied in a pejorative sense to the caecum in this story because the diminutive human appendix's enigmatic function (though more likely its functionS) lie outside formalized contemporary conceptual understanding that might be considered "the consensus accepted explanation among scientists." In this case the caecum is 'useless' because it is frustratingly unfettered to consensus interpretations. The fault obviously lies in the caecum and not in investigators whose roles in popular stories on science are equivalents to Ivanhoes and Sir Gawains...


Secondly, this story represents the importance of Adaptationists' Drive. If an organ is present, as the human appendix clearly is, then it "must be there for some reason." This is the diminished version of the phrase 'it wouldn't be there if it wasn't adaptive.'
Adaptive Ideology as it is perceived by society and the press must fulfill the quest for the missing purpose. Lost is the notion that human appendix is in the midst of an evolution story that isn't finished. THat the role(s) of the caecum across evolutionary time have probably changed and are changing.

However, for the press and society and adaptationist scientists, THE PURPOSE must be found, and it must be found in some context of contemporary science.

Even though I am an empiricist and she is a relativist, I appreciate Judith Butler's contention that the things we discuss are all constituted in language, consequently we must critically consider how words, even words used in stories about science, constitute even parts of organisms in a cultural reality defined by words.